I know that this may be a little off-topic for this newsgroup, and I am
really hoping NOT to start a religious battle of Java vs. .NET, but here I
go nonetheless.

I am hoping to track down some specifics with respect to the Java platform
versus the .NET platform, in preparation for a discussion with senior
management at my company regarding a proposed port from Java to .NET. This
proposed port was based on the impression that .NET is a quicker / easier /
lower cost platform in which to develop web applications.

Steve Whatmore wrote:
> I am hoping to track down some specifics with respect to the Java platform
> versus the .NET platform, in preparation for a discussion with senior
> management at my company regarding a proposed port from Java to .NET. This
> proposed port was based on the impression that .NET is a quicker / easier /
> lower cost platform in which to develop web applications.
>
> When I say specifics, I am referring too:
>
> a.. Overall platform characteristics
> a.. Stability
> b.. Performance
> c.. Scalability
> b.. Developer Productivity when compared to Java
> c.. Frameworks availability / usage (ie. .NET version of Struts ???)
> d.. Object-Oriented concepts (ie. code reuse when compared to Java)
> e.. Maintainability / enhance-ability of code
> f.. TCO
> g.. Any other relevant items
> Having done numerous searches online, I have yet to find any detailed real
> world examples (excluding MS) and am searching for any information with
> detailed real world statistics (for example the total time to develop on
> each platform).

Unfortunately for you, these are questions the answers to which
management usually expects to be black-and-white, but which have NO such
answers. The variables involved are incredibly complex and dependent
upon specifics within your organization, which means there are no
general answers - the questions have to be looked at in the context of
your company.
As you said, "for example the total time to develop on each platform" -
that is not something that can even remotely be answered without knowing
all kinds of context such as developer and IT/support skill sets
involved, existing infrastructure, tolerance for single-vendor lock-in,
tolerance for bleeding-edge vs. desire for proven stability, external
interfaces/applications/systems that must be integrated, relative
weights of importance for the -ity factors (scalability,
maintainability, reliability, etc.). See? All those things (and many,
many more) affect the answers to the questions you're asking.
That is why you haven't found much on the web to answer them - other
than the Mighty Micro$oft Marketing Machine trying very hard to sell
their platform, nobody of decent reputation pretends that they can
answer the question in a generic way. Consulting companies charge a lot
of money to come in, understand your company's context, and offer a
recommendation like what you are looking for.
I, for one, could offer some general answers, but my experience and
existing opinion, while professional and based on years of experience,
is already biased because I am intimate with Java technologies. Still, I
can say for certain only a few things, such as the community of
frameworks, libraries, and components (especially open-source) for Java
is much broader than that for .net, from what I've seen. That is only
natural and predictable given the age/maturity difference and the
openness of Java compared to .net. Another example of general but not
necessarily useful advice is that TCO is difficult to measure but don't
underestimate the value of open-source. It is usually faster/cheaper to
track down problems or write enhancements to something for which you
have the source than to pay for an expensive support contract and then
wade through the support bureaucracy to get real help when you need it,
or wait for M$ to release their next patch or upgrade.
Still, .net makes sense for some organizations. There are just so many
variables - I've worked at Fortune 50 companies and at 12-person
start-ups, but in all cases the effort to decide an application platform
it always a major undertaking and ALWAYS specific to that company rather
than an answer that can be looked up in Wikipedia ;-)

The Eclipse Foundation is the wrong forum to ask this question. You might like to try Ask EZ forum instead, or post it to one of the Java-specific ones on JavaLobby.

> This proposed port was based on the impression that .NET is a
> quicker / easier / lower cost platform in which to develop web
> applications.

Any proposed port that hasn't already answered these questions is likely to be politically motivated; so the decision's already been made and they're looking for reasons to justify it.

Frankly, the language is never the issue. It's the quality of supporting tools that affects applications. You can count the number of .Net developer tools on the fingers of one finger, and the number of quality .Net developer tools on the fingers of one foot.

I am programming in .net and I have programmed in Java
net is a copy of java
but there is one thing that .net couldn´t do a good copy: the virtual machine
Java´s virtual machine is more powerfull than .net´s virtual machine
What do you think?

As said before, I am not sure this is the right place to talk about it.

If .Net seems to be (and is surely in a way) a copy of Java, they don't
have the same philosophy. One has a language runtime while the other has
a virtual machine. Having worked with both, I think Java is a larger
developement platform with many efficient tools, documentations and
other kind of resources while .Net is a very efficient platform with
complete functionalities which allow a clean and quick development. In
my opinion, Java is better for building a good information system and
..Net is the appropriate solution for producting software.